


i've got no damned reason yet to die.

by ikijai



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Development Over Time, F/M, Gen, PTSD, Post-Punisher/DDs2/Defenders, time jump??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 20:17:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12991722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ikijai/pseuds/ikijai
Summary: These days, he keeps his head down. He'sPete Castiglioneand he's pretty damn good at it, too.[otherwise: Frank and the important people in his life as he deals with things. Post-everything.]





	i've got no damned reason yet to die.

**Author's Note:**

> _"You go away for a long time and return a different person, you never come all the way back."_    
> — Paul Theroux

These days, he keeps his head down. He’s _Pete Castiglione_ and he’s pretty damn good at it, too.

He gets a part-time job in downtown Queens, works every other day until the sun decides to go down and perspiration drips from his skin. It’s physical work and it keeps the tension from throbbing through his joints, keeps it from piling up.

He walks to the site in the morning, takes a taxi back when it’s dark because that’s when the people who would notice him go out. It doesn't stop the paranoia, but it’s what he's got to deal with.

He's at peace with things. ‘Least he tells himself he is. 

 

                                  ----

During the walk to his job one day, he threatens some jerk teenagers picking on a dog in a back alley. His finger itches over a trigger that isn't there.

 

                                  ----

Dinah Madani shows up in some old dive bar toward the dark spot of town. He thinks she’s probably just as shocked by the unexpected reunion as he is.

“Which sorrows are we drinking away tonight?” she says, totally normal like he wasn’t once her target.

He pulls himself up on the bar stool, clears his throat before downing the rest of a terrible jack and coke. Her purple-blue bruises have healed perfectly, he observes. He can’t profess the same for his own yet. “What’re you doin’ out here, Madani?”

“I could ask you the same thing, Pete.”

Frank snorts deep in his throat. There’re less than a dozen people in the joint, most of them drunk, yet she’s still keeping up appearances.

“Didn't have any place to be,” Frank utters, ordering a drink for both of them when the bartender returns. “You're here, too, yeah?” He adds, thinks his voice is teasing but it's difficult to tell. “The worst goddamn bar this town’s got. Who’d you piss off this time?”

“The type of people you don't want to piss off.”

They drink in tranquility for a while, long enough for the clock to tick past 12 and a bulb to burn out under the t.v.

“I take it you’ve heard Russo’s awake.”

It’s so out of nowhere that Frank’s insides immediately tense up. Just the thought of the traitorous piece of shit jolts a white-hot rage through him. He thinks that, maybe, _definitely_ , the homeland agent’s presence tonight wasn’t just some odd chance.

“Don’t wanna talk about that,” he utters through his teeth, knuckles turning numb from where they’re shoved deep into his jacket pockets.

An undetectable expression falls over the woman’s stoic face before she’s downing her own drink, and when she talks, there’s a quiver there he didn’t expect.

“He played me too, you know,” she says. There is zero space for argument in her no-bullshit tone. “He fucked us both.”

Frank takes it in and knows it’s the truth. Physically, mentally—he’d tricked her too. He’d taken people from between her fingers with no form of penitence.

“Yeah.”

He isn’t keeping track of how many drinks he’s downed when he decides he’s done, throwing a couple bills down before he’s turning to leave. He’s pissed and doesn’t want to take it out on the well-intentioned agent.

He has to fight with himself to keep from driving to the intensive care unit this instant to get the job done.

“Wait,” Madani says. Whether she means it or not, the word sounds distinctly like an order.

“Castiglione,” she tries when he doesn’t turn.

He keeps his back to her, pushing toward the door.

“ _Frank_.”

It’s enough to stop him in his tracks. He inspects the bar peripherally, trying to detect whether anybody heard the name that wasn’t _Pete_. But nobody did. The place is just as dead. With a tick to his jaw, he forces himself to turn.

When he does, Madani is burning a hole through his face, keen eyes narrowed in a debilitating watchfulness. He thinks there’s some type of grief there. The type of thing that says _I understand_. But it feels like pity and he doesn't think he deserves it.

“Just—” she intakes deeply. “I know you're used to getting your back stabbed, used to all _this_. I know I’m the last person who could pretend to have been in your position, but,” she pauses for an instant, but it's too much for Frank’s impatience to take. The words drop in a thunderous pound against his eardrums.

She’s talking about Billy and his dead family and it’s too much.

“Don't ever let anybody tell you you deserve that.”

Part of him wants to yell that she doesn’t know what he deserves, wants to tell her to keep her distance and stick to the plan.

“You watch your back, Madani,” he utters instead.

 

                                  ----

He walks past Karen’s job like it's instinct. He doesn't go inside, doesn't come closer to the doors than ten yards. His photo is still plastered and graffiti-painted all over town.

Instead, he ducks his head and turns the other direction. It isn't worth it.

 

                                  ----

Frank goes to Curtis’ group therapy every Tuesday night for weeks, only faltering once. It’s a tight-knit group yet he still feels distinctly like an outsider.

“It won’t happen again,” he tells his friend when it’s only them. “I’ll be here, every time.”

The disappointment in himself is overwhelming.

But Curt tells him he’s a work in progress. That this is what the whole thing is designed for in the first place. It’s okay to take your time, he says.

_It’s okay if you’re not prepared yet._

 

                                   ----

He’s weak and dials Karen’s number in a telephone booth where he knows the call won't be traced. But he hangs up the phone before her voice can tell him to _leave a message after the tone_. Karen would definitely kick his ass if she knew what he’d been putting himself through. She’d hand it to him backwards, he thinks.

 

                                   ----

He finishes Life of Pi in a day and a half. The tiger definitely isn't in the boat.

 

                                   ----

The park is still taped off when he drives by. It's been wiped down of any tangible violence, the plastic ponies thoroughly polished. None of it changes what happened there. It's dead and lifeless and he wants no part of it.

He pulls his hood tighter over his head and presses down on the gas pedal when a police cruiser passes on the other side of the one-way street.

 

                                    ----

Thoughts of Karen intrude his mind day and night. He thinks about the way she kept him going in more ways than one and the way it wasn't involuntary. Thinks about how he hasn’t talked to her since the day he nearly got her killed for the thousandth time.

It’s no wonder he’s turned into such an insomniac.

 

                                    ----

He discovers, oddly, that loneliness isn’t isolation. It’s outside surrounded by thousands of people.

 

                                    ----

The first time he shows up at David’s place, he knows it’s pathetic. He drags himself onto the porch like a kicked puppy with no place to go. It’s been weeks without so much as a phone call, yet he stands there with jittery toes and a lip pulled between his teeth.

He thinks about taking off as soon as his knuckles knock the wood of _door 229_ , thinks about the way he’ll jump back in his truck and let the tires screech against the pavement without a backward glance as he waits. The door swings open before the thought turns into a viable option.

David peers at him with one of those dumb-precise gazes Frank’s grown used to. “I can't say this isn't interesting.”

Frank clears his throat, ingesting deeply. “Curt says I should, uh, spend time with people I know.” _Trust_ is the word he’d really used. But Frank’s too unsure of himself to use it, so he doctors the sentence until he thinks it works for whatever type of partnership he and David share together.

“Then that’s why you’re here?”

“You know why I’m here, David,” he utters. “I just told you. Quit being a prick.”

“Did, uh,” David whispers, peering down both sides of the vacant street outside with paranoia obviously displayed. It’s then Frank knows what he’d heard not too long ago was the sound of a deadbolt unlocking. “Did something happen? Did you hear from—”

“Let’s not do that, okay?” Frank interrupts, displaced insecurity laced through his tone. “None of that bullshit. That’s the only way this works.”

Whether he’s talking about Kandahar or Billy Russo or _Karen_ , it’s too much for Frank to deal with.

His tall, disjointed partner throws his puffy head back in an undetectable laugh, teeth showing as if to tease him. He wants to wipe the smug look off the piece of shit’s face.

“Yeah, okay. Kids aren’t home. Wife’s at work. Why not? You can put the dishwasher back together.”

The change in the other man is obvious. Since being back where he should be, he's become less droopy, more visibly awake. He doesn't drag himself around half dressed with day-old tea between unsteady fingers.

Deep down, Frank’s relieved for the distraction. He's relieved David doesn’t turn his back.

 

                                  ----

Frank fixes up the Liebermans’ brake lights because David wouldn’t pick up a tool to save his life and it’d be too expensive to go to a professional. It’s the decent thing to do. It’s the type of thing Pete would do. He tells himself that's why he keeps showing up.

Not because he cares about Zach and Leo too much or because they make him feel important.

 

                                  ----

He tries his damndest not to think about Karen. He does, anyway.

 

                                  ----

He’s walking down the tantalized streets of Hell’s Kitchen when he notices _Daredevil: Protector of the Kitchen_ displayed along the side of an old building. It’s so fresh that there’s still thick, wet paint dripping through the dirty bricks.

 _‘Dead too soon’_ it says. There’s an _x_ over the place where his face should be. Frank thinks it’s ironic how it’s all done in white—all pure for the vigilante who wouldn’t kill.

 

                                  ----

He wakes up yelling out to images of his wife and kids more often than not these days. There’re blood stained ponies and terrible voices pounding through his head until he thinks he’ll tear open his stash of weapons and do unspeakable things. He’s paralyzed and his throat isn’t working. Tucking his head under a tense bicep, he holds their photo to his beating chest and tries desperately to feel something other than fear or panic.

He understands that things need to be different, understands that his EED was PTSD the whole time.

 

                                  ----

Karen’s there in the dreams too, sometimes. Too often, he’s the one pulling the trigger.

He keeps his distance because he’s got to.

 

                                  ----

_One batch. Two batch. Penny and dime._

 

                                  ----

Karma is a piece of shit through and through. It’s as though the downpour outside gets worse the more he distances himself from anything resembling happiness.

 _Happy is a kick in the balls waiting to happen_ , he’d devoted back then. He wishes he could go back in time and unsay the words, wishes it was only his jacket that was drenched beyond repair.

 

                                  ----

He’s tired all the goddamn time, so he takes painkillers not to feel numb. It still isn’t enough of a distraction.

The truth dawns upon him like a freight train: the only way he can identify himself is by his inability to be identified.

 

                                  ----

One week later, he finds himself planted in front of Karen’s place. He thinks he’ll knock this time, thinks he’ll _tell_ her. The dry, wilted petals behind the window pane stop him dead in his tracks. He turns on his heels and tells himself his eyes are watery because of the low temperature outside.

She’s probably at work, typing up another incredible piece on why the system doesn’t work to take care of people the way they deserve to be taken care of.

She probably doesn’t want anything to do with him, is probably tired of being dragged into his ugly excuse of a life over and over.

It’s useless.

 

                                  ----

Ignoring the knot in his throat feels like obstruction of justice.

 

                                  ----

He’s on 44th street when an old man behind a hot-dog cart stares at his profile for too long to be an offward glance. Frank watches peripherally as he tries to piece it together, watches as his lips begin to part to ask the damning question.

“Don’t do it,” Frank utters to himself, inhales the cool oxygen unsteadily through his nose and tries not to draw attention. “Don’t fuckin’ say it.”

He doesn’t want to have to shut him up in all the wrong ways, but he knows he’ll do it if that’s what it takes. He quickens his pace toward the train before it becomes more than just a possibility.

Not today.

 

                                 ----

He wonders if seeing dead people is a side effect of inner deterioration.

 _Warning_ , he pictures one of those infomercials his parents used to watch on t.v. every sunday night before kicking off. _This medication may kill you._

 

                                 ----

Maybe Karen’ll write another story about him one day. Titled _Punisher: Dead. Not soon enough._

He doubts it’d make a difference.

 

                                 ----

He teaches Leo how to replace a tire outside, kissing the top of her head when she smiles up at him with those innocent eyes that remind him too much of his daughter’s. Zach warms up to him more every week, calls him _Pete_ and texts him youtube links to old Wu-Tang songs. They make him think about his family in a way that isn't devastating.

Frank stops pretending to fix things every time he shows up to David’s house unannounced. Those kids might just be important to him.

 

                                 ----

He dreams about yelling on live television in front of too many people.

_Indictment number 1986 - 4447, The People v. Frank Castle. The People v. The deadly, insane Punisher._

 

                                 ----

David’s talking his ear off about some tech type thing he doesn’t understand when the topic suddenly jumps to Karen and why he hasn’t tried to talk to her yet.

“What’s the deal with that, Frank? Does she even know you’re not dead?”

“It’s too dangerous,” he utters simply.

“Pardon me, what?” David pushes, scepticism written all over his face as he leans over the kitchen table. “You’ve been here how many times in the past few months? A dozen? Two dozen? That isn’t the point. The point is, no one’s coming after us. We aren’t in danger and neither is she. If we were, I’d known about it by now. You’re just being a wallowing asshole.”

“Jesus christ,” Frank utters under his breath. “You’re worse than that kid of yours, Lieberman, you know that?”

“ _Yes, David_.” David does his poor imitation of Frank in that obnoxious, feigned-wisdom tone of his. “ _You’re totally right, and I’m wrong. I’ll talk to Karen tonight_.”

“David,” Frank interrupts, fist coming down on the table’s wooden surface involuntarily. “You ever stop talking long enough to notice you sound like an idiot? Shut your damn mouth for once, will you? You’re giving me a goddamn headache.”

The prick isn't even intimidated.

“You’re just pissed because you know I know what I’m talking about and you don’t want to admit it to yourself.”

Frank let’s the words dig deep until the effect is permanent. David only keeps watching him, some type of undetectable touchiness prowling in his inherently understanding depths of blue.

“You act like you’re waiting for, for _permission_ or something,” David speaks when Frank decides not to. Then his partner’s voice turns to a whisper. “You’re wearing yourself out for no reason, man. You’re driving yourself into a tunnel with no exit. I don’t want to see that happen to you. You deserve better than that and we both know it.”

The tension from David’s words is overwhelming, so he tries to joke. Tries to take the attention off of his own damn problem.

“Do you have even an _ounce_ of integrity?”

David’s smile widens. “I have many ounces of integrity.”

Frank snorts deep in his throat, fingers tightening over a warm jack daniel's. “This coming from the guy who got with his wife dressed as a damn _popsicle_.”

“Insignificant details, my friend,” David utters. “Insignificant details.”

“You’re a dick.” But he isn’t wrong. He's painfully not wrong.

David shrugs, dumb grin taking over his whole face. He knows he’s won. “Takes one to know one.”

Frank wants to punch the other man square in the jaw. He throws back his drink and bumps their knees together, instead.

 

                                  ----

The nerve to pick up the phone develops on a Thursday, of all days.

 

                                  ----

It isn’t pounding out for the first time in days, U.V. rays bouncing off the waterfront and warming his insides to the point of depletion.

The trees are naked, ice below his feet and in his thick veins. His pulse skyrockets more and more the longer he waits.

He knows she's there before he turns his head to watch her coming toward him, and he isn’t sure if he feels like prey or praying because this isn’t an illusion at 4 AM.

Karen’s there all at once, standing a yard away with a painfully undetectable poker face. Then she's walking toward him and his throat itches, but he doesn’t take off the other direction. He stands his ground and prepares to take whatever it is she’s decided to throw at him.

Her steps are tentative as she inches forward, like she doesn’t believe what her own eyes are seeing. Like she doesn’t know what to think.

When she’s directly in front of him, there isn’t a yelled _where’ve you been_ or _why didn’t you find me weeks ago_. There’s just tears prickling in her oval eyes and an uttered _thank god you’re not dead, you idiot_ before she pulls him in tightly.

They’ve got a lot of talking to do, but this works for now. He thinks, for a moment, that this is what peace is. Frank’s a touch starved junkie and doesn’t give a damn. He is deliriously warm inside and not at all the type of worried he thought he’d be.

“Karen,” he whispers against her temple, lips dry then wet with his own tears.

“Frank,” she says simply, tone itself keeping him on his own two feet. “You okay?”

Her thumb brushes over a disappearing blackish-blue bruise along his jaw.

“Now, yeah,” Frank utters. It’s a wonder he can talk at all with the way his stomach defies the laws of physics. “You taking care of yourself?”

She pauses for more than a moment, nodding nonetheless when it passes. _I don't give a damn about that_ , it says.

“Where’d you get these?” she whispers, eyes filled with worry as she inspects the extent of his injuries from William Rawlins along with the man who stabbed him the back in more ways than physically.

He can't imagine her reaction if she'd seen how terrible he looked the day it happened.

“You don’t want to know,” he offers, timbre scratchy to disguise what’s truly there.

Karen finally pushes the way he’d thought she would in every scenario he imagined before driving to this spot. “What the hell happened, Frank? I thought they _killed_ you.”

The words sound painfully like the accusation he knows he deserves every part of. Any defense he had instantly dissipates and it’s all because of this woman. He's powerless.

“I took care of it, Karen. I took ‘em out. I got a new identity thanks to Madani. To the public, I’ve been dead for weeks.”

“You’re done, then?” There’s an undying intensity in the question, ignoring anything unimportant. “It’s over?”

He wants to say yes, wants to tell her that he’ll throw his past in the trash where it belongs. But they both know that isn’t true. He’s still got work to do. People to kill.

“I’m trying to be done,” he pants, jaw clenched tight. “I want to be done.”

Karen nods, slowly up and down. Frank still can’t believe they’re together in person and not yelling, not planning their next joint operation. It’s been too damn long and one of them is trembling.

“Got a job,” he says after a while. “Got this place in Queens, I've been keeping a low profile there.” He pauses, tongue trapped between his teeth. “I’ve been working things out.”

“I’m proud of you,” Karen says, nothing even resembling dishonestly in her dilated pupils.

Frank thinks it’s a smile that pulls at his upper lip. “Thanks, Karen.”

“You been doin’ pretty good work in the paper,” he utters, and he doesn't care if it means she'll know he’s read them every damn week for the past two months.

“Thanks, Frank.” Her tone is warm, dry lips spreading in a distorted type of smile that doesn't reach her eyes the way it usually does.

They're not quite there yet.

“I didn’t know if you’d want to see me,” she says out of nowhere. “After some time passed, I thought—”

“ _Karen_ ,” he pushes. This talk should be happening the other way around. “I won't _ever_ not want to see you. It’s just, I didn’t want you to be in any type of danger. If something happened to you because of me, if you got twisted back up in all this shit, I wouldn't know what to do or I’d, I’d—” he trips over his words, inhaling deeply in a way that does nothing to temper the unadulterated shakiness inside.

“I know, Frank,” she interrupts, steadying him back into place only to plant a barely-there kiss against his throbbing temple. “I know.”

 

                                  ----

His mouth twitches at the corner when he thinks about her during the day. Despite everything, she took him back.

 

                                  ----

He quits his job when a kid who reminds him too much of Donnie starts working there. He’ll probably inject himself with a shot of dopamine next.

 

                                  ----

They start meeting at the diner on 2nd Avenue once a week, sometimes twice. He listens to her relay stories about work and feels so damn warm inside he doesn’t know what to do with it. He introduces _Pete Castiglione_ to her, can't help but to smile when a twinkling laugh that isn’t pretend escapes her throat.

Karen talks about _Trish Walker_ and  _Foggy Nelson_ , praising them for keeping her upright when things got too tough. She dips her head when she talks, kicking a heeled foot against his booted one under the table when she thinks no one’s watching.

They discuss their oxymoronic version of normal things over toast and too-black liquid. They’re more open with each other than they used to be, going into detail about their daily lives in their own privacy. Frank almost forgets about all the people around them. He tugs down his hood, keeps his head up. _Pete_ would be disappointed, but it doesn't matter. Karen is there because she wants to be and isn't looking at him like he's terrifying.

The way she says his name is different, like she’s proud to own it. She smiles wide, the kind that shows teeth and makes his chest tight. This is the furthest thing from her watching him kill men from behind the counter in an identical diner. It’s the furthest thing from her watching him drag a man into the woods to shoot him point blank.

They descend almost too easily into this pattern. He most definitely isn’t lonely.

 

                                  ----

It turns out David’s incessant pestering was the shove he needed to head down the right path. When he gets over his pride, he’ll thank the prick one day.

 

                                  ----

He can't help but to wonder whether something terrible will happen to disrupt this temporary bliss. Something to compensate for all the things he's taken.

That’d be god’s kind of funny.

 

                                  ----

Frank keeps his promise to attend every group therapy session, staying the whole time as opposed to the first half hour. He doesn’t watch the clock tick as he sits listening to the way he isn’t the only one with an immovable weight on his shoulders. It makes him more patient, more like a person without an inevitable death sentence inside.

The transformation is damn near physical.

 

                                  ----

He has dinner with the Liebermans more often, taking leftover dishes when they insist they don’t want him to starve.

“You gonna pull your pants down again?” Frank teases when David gets a little too drunk.

“You wish,” the taller man snorts back.

Before he departs, they ask him if he’s drinking enough water and he knows they’re too invested.

 

                                  ----

He waits for days, tunes into the news and digs for information. But people don't go after her. She isn't in any type of danger and he is painfully aware than he no longer has an excuse to keep his distance.

 

                                  ----

(When you've been on your own for such a long time, the possibility of happiness is terrifyingly unfamiliar.)

 

                                  ----

The diner is packed, so they opt to sit toward the back and keep a low profile. Karen pulls out the week’s Bulletin from her purse and throws it down in front of him with a smile she doesn’t even try to hide.

Frank feels his eyebrows crease together as he takes in the headline at the top of the page: _Things Are Sunnier in the Underworld._

“I got promoted,” she explains, ivory skin turning impossibly crimson as her thin frame shakes with the laughter she tries and fails to hold in at his disarray.

“Oh,” he says, face warming. His own smile is becoming more genuine, too. " _Oh_.”

 _I'm proud of you, too_ , he thinks.

“Yeah, Ellison worked up the nerve to ask me to be head writer of worthy topics yesterday evening. It was definitely an interesting day.”

“That’s good, Karen,” he says, and his insides are inflamed though it’s pouring out. “That’s incredible. Don’t let nobody in that place tell you to give up.”

Karen’s face lights up until his heart thuds behind his ears like some metaphorical testimony.

They order eggs over easy and a piece of cherry pie, tell themselves they share a plate because they’re poor city dwellers. He talks openly about group therapy and his dwindling pain until she tells him thing'll be okay in that pure tone he doesn’t want to ever stop drowning in.

For a shade so inherently cold, her blue eyes smolder impossibly bright in an unspoken promise of more things they’ll discover together.

It's something he definitely wants to get used to.

 

                                  ----

“Things’ll get tough, yeah,” Frank tells the group on Tuesday night. “Tell you the truth, they won't ever _stop_ being tough. But you gotta find people who teach you things about yourself you never thought you'd know. That's what'll keep you going when you think your life’s over.”

He pauses, and something in his throat makes the next words shake. “That's what'll keep you breathing when all you want to do is go back to the war.”

 

                                  ----

Things get distant when Billy enters his dreams, too. Frank counts exactly twelve days in which peace wasn’t just an untouchable idea. He can’t get the knowledge that he’s awake or Dinah Madani’s words out of his skull. They’re ingrained so deeply it’s torturous.

 

                                  ----

He keeps to himself for too long this time. Without fail, without pause, he disappoints people.

 

                                  ----

By the spring, he's got a toothbrush at Karen’s place and no desire to be anywhere else. They don't talk about why he kept his distance again, why he isolated himself in all the wrong ways.

He shows up at the door with deep bags under his eyes and an apology at the tip of his tongue.

He’d get down on his knees and plead if that’s what it took.

“You know,” Karen utters, tone all drenched in too much hidden pain he knows is his own fault. “I don't like what you do, but I understand why you do it.”

 

                                 ----

(You’d think he’d be used to being trapped in his own body by now.)

 

                                 ----

He and David go back to the basement together when traffic isn't overflowing. It’s mostly trashed, and being there fills him with an ugly type of nostalgia he only wants to feel this once. But he promised David he wouldn't have to come back alone to take the things they left behind home.

This is the place he'd had nightmares about his dead family in, the place in which he’d been weak and beaten near to death by people he was supposed to be able to trust.

“You okay?” David’s voice pulls him out of distraction.

He's staring at the wall where Billy’d told him he _knew_ and there are tears welling up to his pupils.

Clearing his throat, Frank lets the dishonest words spill out. “Yeah, David. Just go pack up your stuff.”

He's glad when his partner doesn't push the issue, disappearing off to another part of the basement to leave him alone with his thoughts. The odor of dead bodies remains long after they've been dragged away.

He'll be overzealous to leave this place behind.

Once they've packed most of their things up and thrown away the rest, David picks up the guitar, brushing months of dust off it before immediately beginning to play a tune Frank doesn't recognize.

“You’re improving,” he utters, lip ticking up in an involuntary smile.

“Yeah, well,” David shrugs. “I was taught by the best.”

“Fair enough.”

David stares longingly at the computers under the dome-shaped center, knowing taking them would be wrong.

“You don’t need those, David,” Frank utters. “You got your life back. This is over.”

David’s eyes turn downcast. “I'm sorry.”

“You stop it with that, okay? Don't be,” Frank pushes. “You don't ever have to be sorry for that.” He pauses, deciding whether to say the next words. “You took back what was yours.”

“It’s still difficult to believe though, you know?” David whispers. “I was so devoted to this _idea_. I spent a year down here.”

Frank nods to himself, peering around the open space that’s so much tinier now. It fills him with disgust.

“And you’ll spend way more than that out in the real world, yeah?”

“Yeah,” David nods, and it's almost as if he can read his thoughts. “I know that face. You talked to Karen, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

David raps his knuckles against Frank’s back in praise. “There you go.”

His partner’s lips turn up as he lets out a throaty laugh and Frank can’t help but to smile back. They’d been the oddest type of domestic when they worked together, dead to practically everyone except each other. They performed illegal operations down here, he’d told David about Karen down here, about how important she was— _is_.

“Was it worth it?” David is totally undignified and doesn't give a damn.

“More than you know.”

He lets the prick jovially play the guitar for another twenty minutes before he decides this place is too unpleasant to take.

“Knock it off, Led Zeppelin. Time to go.”

David nods, a weird type of sadness pooling in his eyes. He’d had way more dependence on this place than Frank will ever understand.

They're back in the truck when David opens his mouth. “Thanks for doing this, Frank,” his partner utters, and he isn't just talking about taking the day trip. “It means a lot.”

David’s trained himself in the skill of maneuvering certain topics that make Frank uneasy while still making his words important.

“Yeah, David,” Frank says, patting the other man on the shoulder with a deep intake before starting the ignition.

This place is the past and they’re done with it.

 

                                  ----

He takes on a drug-trafficking gang with too many members and not enough weaponry. They knock him around pretty good but he comes out on top.

He tells himself it’s better this way. He’s putting himself to use.

 

                                  ----

Going back to his old ways is tempting until he thinks of all the people he gives a damn about and knows he can't, knows he won't.

Still, the dichotomy of being two people at once is goddamn exhausting.

 

                                  ----

He shows up to Karen’s place with take out and a black eye. There are things he notices immediately. The empty pot in the windowsill. The discarded, inky paper all over the floor in the telltale sign of a journalist.

“ _Jesus_ ,” Karen exclaims, “what happened this time?” But there’s the tiniest hint of a smile on her lips that’s teasing.

The thrum of _warmth, understanding, desire_ is anything but underwhelming. It’s enough to distract him from the open wound inside.

“Just some douchebags I dealt with the other day. It’s nothin’.”

“Here,” she pushes, leading him to the kitchenette, taking some ice out of the freezer. Karen wraps it in a paper towel before pressing it into his palm. “Put that up against it, okay? It’ll make it feel better.”

This woman treats him with an infinite tenderness he doesn’t think he deserves.

“Thanks for this, Karen,” he utters when they pull the plastic bags out and prepare to dive into the takeout Indian.

“You’re the one who brought it,” Karen shrugs, pretending she doesn’t know what he really means.

He almost prefers it that way.

“You’ve been going out there too often.”

He's taken aback but not shocked by the sheer power in her declaration.

“Yeah, uh,” he clears his throat. “Yeah. Kind of.”

They pull some drinks out eventually, taking in the tranquility as they work their way through a twelve pack. There’s an unspoken truce in the silence until it’s shattered.

Karen’s head is ducked low so that only part of her face is visible, trying not to be obvious while peering over his injuries. “Those look terrible.”

“I've had worse,” Frank shrugs impulsively, jaw ticking. “I'm used to it.”

“You shouldn't have to be. You don't _deserve_ to be,” she shoots instantly, tone somewhere between pissed and dejected. Her voice teeters on the edge of yelling.

“Christ, Kare—what do you want? What do you want me to tell you?”

“I don't want you to _die_ , Frank. I don't want to turn on the t.v. one day and for it to not be wrong about you being killed the third goddamn time around. Is that so difficult to believe?”

“You deserve better than this, Karen,” he forces out of his tight throat.

“I'm a grown woman,” Karen pushes back. “I'll decide what I deserve.”

“You don't owe me.”

“Just like you don't have to protect me?”

“I have to keep going out there, Karen,” he whispers pitifully. It's difficult to hear himself talk under the sound of his head pounding.

“ _Why?_ ” she pushes. Despite everything, the word is delicate, like she knows he’ll fall apart at the wrong touch.

“There’s still people that gotta pay."

He keeps going when she only stares him down, wanting more than the usual deflection.

“It makes me feel like I’m still important to them,” Frank utters, overwhelmed with just how much he knows he can trust her with this information. “Even before they died, I was just—I was tired, you know? All the time, but not the kind where I wanted to sleep. It was, it was _different_. I couldn't be who I used to be for them. I couldn’t do my _job_.”

Karen’s peering at him like she sees his ugly, dirty insides and still wants every part. He has to shut his eyes just to stop the tears.

At first, Frank isn't sure if he imagines her lips touching his while he's in the pitch black. It's soft and practiced and he’s torn between personified joy and despair. Her fine hairs tickle his nose when she pulls back, thumb at his jaw as she waits for him to do something. To do anything. Despite it all, she still waits for him, wiping the tears from under his dark eyes without judgment.

“I'm tired, Karen. I'm so damn tired.”

“Tell me what to do,” she whispers. When he opens his eyes, he's met with a sight he doesn't ever want to stop bearing witness to. Her pupils widen impossibly, twinkling under the pastel sunlight shining through the window. “I don’t know what to do.”

He comes undone for this woman, overdosing on their unique type of intimacy.

_Where does that end, Frank?  
I want there to be an after, for you._

“Just be there,” Frank utters, kissing her back with as much passion he can dig out. He thinks she deserves everything good in the world, and even if he isn't it, he’ll damn well try to be. “That’s it.”

Karen’s own tears drip one by one, but her lips are turning up. “Don't disappear on me again, okay? I wouldn't be able to take it.”

He understands now that it’s okay to let people take care of him, too. These are the places he knows he belongs. Karen’s pulse invigorates when he touches his temple to hers, uttering promises he’ll try to keep like his life depends on it. It probably does at this point.

Frank takes his time holding the universe in his palms, wrapped up tightly in her until nothing else matters. It is so much goddamn more than enough.

He's been prepared to die for too long. It doesn’t mean he wants to.

**Author's Note:**

> I want to thank every person who took the time out of their day to check this thing out. You're incredible.


End file.
